Lawyers say the case against Bob
Gondor and Randy Resh could be titled The Insider's Guide to
Prosecutorial
Misconduct.

By Martin Kuz

Connie Nardi had the Upper Deck bar buzzing the night
of
August
14, 1988. As customers in the Mantua pub gawked and hollered, the lithe
brunette
danced barefoot on the bar, swiveling to the strains of classic rock.
At
one point, a young man named Troy Busta joined her, and the two bumped
hips
for a few minutes before climbing down. A half-hour later, wanting to
cool
off, they left to take a motorcycle ride.

About the same time, Bob Gondor ambled in and noticed
his pal
Randy
Resh. The two men, buddies since childhood, grew up in Mantua,
southeast
of Cleveland. They worked with their hands, whether gripping tools on
the
job -- Gondor was a carpenter, Resh a roofer -- or beers at the bar.
They
knew Busta from the pub scene, but neither considered him much more
than
an acquaintance.

Yet their lives would become forever knotted with his
when
Nardi
turned up dead the next day.

A fisherman spotted her half-naked body floating in a
pond in
Geauga County, a few miles from Upper Deck. The 31-year-old
divorcée
and mother had been strangled, apparently across the border in Portage
County.
Five days later, investigators arrested Busta, a high school dropout
with
a rap sheet dotted by drug and alcohol busts.

Upper Deck patrons saw Busta and Nardi exit the bar,
return
an
hour later, and leave again. He would come back alone three hours
later.
Gondor and Resh also left the pub during the evening, visiting the
nearby
Village Tavern and returning to Upper Deck after an hour. That brief
bar
hop, they say, cost them their freedom.

Authorities would use Gondor and Resh's absence from
Upper
Deck
to assert they rendezvoused with Busta and Nardi that night. Police
alleged
that the three men attempted to rape her; when she struggled, they
killed
her.

Busta, 21, would tell that story in court to avoid any
possibility
of sitting in the electric chair. In exchange for a term of 15 years to
life,
he pleaded guilty to murder in early 1989 and agreed to provide future
testimony.
He got his chance a year later, when Gondor and Resh, both 24, went to
trial.
With Busta the linchpin in the state's case, both were convicted and
received
sentences that likely ensured they would die behind bars.

The next 12 years passed with glacial slowness, as
court
after
court rejected Gondor and Resh's appeals. Then, last June, their long
shot
seemed to come in.

Following a two-week hearing, Portage County Judge
Charles
Bannon
ruled that the two friends' trial lawyers failed to disclose loads of
compelling
evidence that supported their claims of innocence. Bannon tossed out
their
convictions and granted them new trials.

Their good fortune didn't last. Within a month, County
Prosecutor
Victor Vigluicci appealed the ruling -- a move that once again plunged
the
case deep into court-docket purgatory and could keep the pair locked up
several
more years. Vigluicci salted the wound when he successfully fought
Gondor
and Resh's bond request to live under house arrest pending the appeal.

At first glance, Vigluicci's actions suggest typical
prosecutor
behavior. But closer scrutiny reveals a case rife with reasonable doubt
--
about his office's credibility as much as Gondor's and Resh's guilt.

Legal observers say that anyone reading between the
lines of
Bannon's
decision will discover what could be titled TheInsider's
Guide
to Prosecutorial Misconduct. They argue that the judge's opinion,
rather
than proving the clumsiness of defense attorneys, shows authorities
coerced
testimony, blurred timelines, and concealed forensic data to clinch the
case.
Appealing his ruling, they add, only makes Vigluicci -- whose
predecessor,
David Norris, won the convictions -- look worse.

"This is just another severe example of prosecutors
withholding
evidence," says Richard Ofshe, a prominent authority on police
interrogation
tactics. The University of California at Berkeley professor testified
on
Gondor and Resh's behalf before Bannon. "It's another example of a
prosecutor
who isn't tough on crime. He's tough on the powerless."

Vigluicci counters that police and Norris nailed the
right
guys
-- simple as that. "I've read the trial record," he says, "and if I
felt
we had put innocent people in prison, we would have dropped the case a
long
time ago. I obviously don't feel that way."

Critics contend Vigluicci could douse suspicion about
his
motives
by dropping the case and blaming the mess on Norris, who left office in
disgrace
after a 1994 conviction for cocaine possession. He instead refuses to
back
off -- a defiance that appears to trouble even his own staff, says Martin
Yant, a private investigator who worked the Nardi case.

"An assistant prosecutor told me . . . that there was
hardly
a
day that went by that he didn't worry that they convicted two innocent
men
for a crime they didn't commit," Yant says. "That should tell you
something."

Between Busta's police statements and court testimony,
his
account
of the murder shifted like sand in the Sahara. The condensed version:

Busta claimed he took Nardi to a spot along the
Cuyahoga River
near
Upper Deck on their first motorcycle trip, around 7 p.m. When they
returned
to the bar an hour later, he lied to Resh that he'd had sex with Nardi.
Busta
testified that he and Resh talked about coaxing her back to the river
so
Resh could "get some."

After Busta bought a "split" six-pack of Corona and
Pabst, he
and Nardi rode down to the river a second time around 8:30. Fifteen
minutes
later, Gondor and Resh arrived in Gondor's white pickup. When Nardi
refused
the trio's advances, Busta alleged, Resh ordered him and Gondor to pin
her
down while he ripped off her shorts and underwear. "She was gasping for
air,
still trying to fight," Busta said at Resh's trial.

When Nardi kicked Gondor, Busta testified, Resh
punched her
in
the head several times, then choked her to death. The three men loaded
Nardi
into the back of Gondor's truck before dumping her body in the pond.
Busta
said he retrieved his motorcycle, chucked the leftover beer into nearby
weeds,
and returned to Upper Deck; the other two were there by the time he
arrived.

Gondor and Resh deny following Busta anywhere that
evening.
"The
only thing we're guilty of is being drunk," says Resh by phone from the
Mansfield
Correctional Institution. Before his conviction, the darkest blotch on
his
criminal record was a DUI; Gondor had a DUI and a domestic dispute
offense.
"This whole case is built on lies," Resh says.

Their version:

They watched Busta and Nardi leave the bar once and
come back
sometime later. Around 10 p.m., the two friends rode in Gondor's truck
to
Village Tavern, heading back within an hour to Upper Deck; Busta walked
in
a half-hour later. Gondor and Resh stayed until the bar closed at
midnight,
then drove to Resh's trailer in Shalersville Township and ordered pizza
from
Domino's. They picked up the pizza a short time later and returned home
for
the night.

Prosecutors would undercut their story with two
crucial
claims.
One was made by a state forensics investigator, who testified that
stains
found in Gondor's truck were human blood. (Still fledgling at the time,
DNA
technology could not verify the blood's source.)

The other came from Lieutenant David Easthon, then
with the
Geauga
County Sheriff's Department and the lead investigator in the case. He
alleged
that, a day before authorities went public about the murder, Gondor and
Resh
returned to Domino's to ask if anyone remembered their visit. Easthon
accused
them of trying to establish an alibi, saying only the killers could
have
known about Nardi's death at that point.

Defense witnesses, including workers at Upper Deck,
Village
Tavern,
and Domino's, confirmed Gondor and Resh's whereabouts for much of the
night.
Their attorneys also pointed out disparities in Busta's various
accounts.
In one statement, he claimed he and Nardi had sex and snorted coke. But
when
lab tests showed no evidence of drugs or semen in her body, he said
they
only kissed, and still later that they hadn't touched at all.
Similarly,
Busta first alleged that Nardi went to the river the second time with
two
men in a car. Later, he insisted that Gondor and Resh followed him, and
that
Gondor had sex with Nardi.

None of the switchbacks seemed to bother jurors, who
believed
Busta and the prosecution's spin in both men's trials. Resh received
consecutive
sentences of 15 years to life for murder and 5 to 15 years for
attempted
rape. Gondor is serving consecutive terms of 10 to 25 years for
manslaughter
and kidnapping.

But last summer, Judge Bannon proved a tougher sell --
owing
to
the staggering amount of evidence that never surfaced at trial. Among
the
details:

" A transcript of a taped interview with Busta,
conducted by
his
defense lawyers and their investigator in September 1988.

The interview's give-and-take appears to serve as a
virtual
primer
on witness coercion. Pressed to reveal who killed Nardi, Busta says, "I
don't
know who did this." Moments later, when prodded about whether Gondor
and
Resh were involved, he replies, "I mean I never witnessed any kind of
hitting,
they never hit here [sic], they never slapped her in front of me."

When one of his lawyers asks if he'd go along with
"setting
up"
other suspects, however, Busta offers that he'd "do anything . . . to
get
myself out of this. I ain't sitting in no chair for somebody else."

Bannon saw red flags -- and, perhaps, an explanation
for
Busta's
frequent contradictions. "This transcript shows pressure being exerted
on
Busta to decide on what he was going to say to the police," the judge
wrote,
"and shows Busta's uncertainty as to the facts of the murder of Connie
Nardi."

" A second forensics report on the stains in Gondor's
pickup.

Dale Laux of the Ohio Bureau of Identification and
Investigation
claimed testing revealed blood in the truck's bed liner. It was the
only
forensic proof the state presented to bolster Busta's account about the
disposal
of Nardi's body. One catch: Prosecutor Norris also had a report from a
renowned
California research institute that stated no blood was detected. The
stains,
a scientist concluded, were "most likely perspiration."

" Work records that deflate the state's allegations
that
Gondor
and Resh tried to cover their tracks.

Nardi vanished on a Sunday night. The next Wednesday,
after
locating
her truck in Upper Deck's parking lot, police put out the word about
her
murder. By Thursday, they had questioned Gondor and Resh, since they
had
been alone in the bar with Busta near closing time. On Friday, the two
friends
went to Domino's to talk to employees. Drunk the night of Nardi's
slaying,
they wanted to sort out where they had gone and when, in case police
grilled
them again.

But prosecutors would assert that Gondor and Resh
returned to
Domino's on Tuesday -- a day before news of the slaying spread.
Two
workers, Brenda Holcomb and Rick Hollibaugh, told authorities the men
stopped
by on Tuesday, according to prosecutors, who portrayed the visit as a
desperate,
telltale attempt to concoct an alibi. The rationale sounds plausible,
except
that work records show Holcomb and Hollibaugh pulled the same shift
only
once that week -- on Friday.

A potential witness's police statement that further
erodes
Busta's
testimony.

Investigators interviewed Pauline Green, who lived on
the
opposite
bank of the river where Busta said the killing occurred. She reported
seeing
a man and a woman on a motorcycle on her side of the river that night
at
7, along with two other men on motorcycles. Around 11:30 -- when
witnesses
placed Gondor and Resh at Upper Deck -- she saw two people on a
motorcycle
drive past her house and throw something into the weeds. The next
morning,
she picked up three Pabst cans and two Corona bottles.

The woman's statement, Bannon wrote, "could have been
used by
defense counsel to show that Busta had lied about the location of the
crime,
and he may have committed the crime with two other people on
motorcycles.
Further, Mrs. Green did not see a white pickup truck . . ."

Since jurors were in the dark about such critical
documents,
Bannon
-- who declined comment to Scene -- deemed their verdicts "not
worthy
of confidence." In ordering new trials, he faulted defense lawyers Gary
Levine
and James Draper for missing evidence that Prosecutor Norris insisted
could
be found in the prosecution's "master file."

Norris inherited the case from prosecutors in Geauga
County,
where
Nardi's body wound up. After Busta pleaded guilty, Geauga prosecutors
ceded
control, because his conviction ostensibly validated the premise that
the
murder occurred in Portage County. But Norris's zeal exceeded his
integrity,
Levine and Draper say.

Both lawyers contend that not even satellite imagery
could
have
pinpointed the key material in the "master file" -- it wasn't there.
They
note that defense attorneys base their arguments largely on reports
provided
by police and prosecutors -- the same people trying to put their
clients
away. Levine, a longtime Cleveland lawyer who represented Gondor,
suspects
the Portage County office played hide-the-evidence to seal its case.

"There's no way on God's green earth that any lawyer
out of
law
school for 10 minutes would not have utilized these things had they
been
provided," he says. If a grand jury had heard the details cited by
Bannon,
he adds, "It's doubtful either of these guys would have even been
indicted."

Draper handled Resh's trial defense and now serves as
Cleveland's
public safety director. He seconds Levine's praise of Bannon's decision
to
vacate the convictions, but says, "We were ineffective because it was
state-induced.
I don't have any doubt in my mind that [prosecutors] concealed
evidence.
And I think the judge knows that, too."

Norris, now with the Florida Public Defender's Office,
scoffs
at the accusation. He kept open files in all cases, he says, and no
documents
were withheld or slipped in at the last minute to thwart defense
lawyers.
While he regards the interview transcript and additional forensics
report
as "inconsequential," he dismisses the idea that Busta fingered Gondor
and
Resh to shield others.

"He doesn't have the character to protect anyone but
himself,"
Norris says. "They were involved with him . . . There's no other
conclusion
you could come to."

It's no shock that Levine and Draper would attest to
their
own
aptitude. Or that Tracey Leonard and James Owens, the Columbus lawyers
handling
the appeals, back them up. More telling is that Gondor and Resh vouch
for
their trial counsel.

Defense experts agree, calling the transcript of
Busta's
interview
the .44 magnum of smoking guns. It lays bare how authorities exploited
an
1,800-volt incentive -- the amount of current coursing through the
electric
chair -- to persuade Busta to implicate Gondor and Resh. Says
Berkeley's
Ofshe: "[Prosecutors] made him a deal. They were willing to offer him a
way
out. And it's all on tape. It doesn't get much more blatant than that."

Adds Jim McCloskey, head of Centurion Ministries, a
New
Jersey-based
nonprofit that advocates on behalf of prisoners it believes were
wrongfully
convicted: "What you had were overzealous prosecutors who kept critical
information
hidden from the defense and the juries. It's inexcusable."

Busta, now 35, did not respond to Scene's
interview
requests.
But what he said on the stand in 1990 -- whether to save himself, cover
for
two other people, or both -- still reverberates for the men he
testified
against.

Resh, 39, divorced his wife a decade ago to spare her
from a
life
married to a prisoner. Gondor, 38, split with his fiancée for
similar
reasons, and his ailing father passed away last year. Still, for all
the
time they have lost, their lifelong friendship remains intact. The two
trade
letters as they work on their case, the one task that helps them shut
out
their frustration.

"You try not to dwell on [the future]," Resh says.
"You have
to
live the reality of being in here."

Prosecutor Vigluicci betrays little edginess when
discussing
Gondor
and Resh. Only when it's mentioned that some think Judge Bannon's
ruling
turned on prosecutors behaving badly, not defense lawyers' gaffes, does
he
flare.

"That's been a mischaracterization of his decision," he
says.
"His
decision included no finding that my predecessor did anything wrong in
this
case."

Vigluicci declines to go into specifics. But he says
filing
an
appeal has nothing to do with grudges, and everything to do with
routine.

In the same way Gondor and Resh appealed earlier court
rulings
that went against them, his office has done likewise. He denies any
sinister
intent to drag out appeals, or to cover for Norris or investigators. He
simply
thinks Gondor and Resh killed Nardi, a view that also explains why he
opposes
the granting of bond. Even when a conviction is overturned, he points
out,
it's "extremely rare" for a prisoner to go free if an appeal is
pending.

"What we're doing is pursuing the legal process as we
would
in
any other criminal case. The appeals take time. That's not our fault,
that's
not the defense's fault. It just takes time."

Martin Yant spits out such reasoning. The Columbus
private
investigator
maintains that the case cuts deeper than Vigluicci cares to admit.

Yant helped dig up details in the mid-'90s that later
would
show
up in Bannon's ruling, including the prosecution's skewed Domino's
timeline
and Pauline Green's statement about seeing three motorcycles near the
river.
He interviewed dozens of people who told him authorities showed no
interest
in information that clashed with their Gondor-Resh theory, or that
hinted
at two other men taking part in the killing.

Typical was Billy Ratcliff, who visited Upper Deck the
night
Nardi
died and corroborated Gondor and Resh's claim that they returned to the
bar
at 11 p.m. When he suggested to Lieutenant Easthon that Gondor and Resh
were
not involved in the murder, "Easthon blew up and stormed out," Ratcliff
told
Yant. "[He] said, 'I'll get you one of these days.'"

Bannon also discerned Easthon's apparent bout of
tunnel
vision.
His ruling refers to an interview Easthon conducted with Upper Deck
owner
Ed Douglas, who mentioned that he'd heard Busta and Nardi went to a
party
with two other men after leaving the bar the second time. Easthon
brushed
him off: "Well, we haven't spoken to these two guys, yeah, we're beyond
that.
We're in the more critical stages now."

Yet Bannon interpreted the statement, which again
purportedly
lurked in the prosecution's "master file" but did not surface at trial,
as
exactly that -- critical. "This report could have been used to impeach
Lieutenant
Easthon's testimony for his failure to follow up a potential lead and
to
lend credibility to the evidence indicating that Busta committed the
offense
with two men other than Gondor and Resh."

Before their arrests, Gondor and Resh claim, Easthon
would
bait
them by saying, "I know you guys were there. The first one to tell the
truth
gets all the breaks." They admit their initial brashness toward the cop
may
have goaded him into ignoring other possible suspects.

In one instance, Gondor recalls, Easthon interrogated
him at
home,
peppering him with questions about whether he loaded Nardi's body into
his
pickup. An irritated Gondor finally slid his keys across a countertop
and
told the cop to take the truck. "I said he could scrape every damn inch
of
paint off it if he wanted to, I didn't care. I had nothing to hide."

Easthon, now the Middlefield police chief and under
orders
from
Vigluicci to keep mum about the case, provides only the blandest of
sound
bites when asked about the two men. "I know they're guilty," he says.
"Juries
have convicted these people . . . Prosecutors have looked at this case
and
concluded that they're guilty."

Norris says his assistant prosecutors and
investigators,
after
receiving the case from Geauga County, raked over all the details and
talked
to nearly every witness Easthon interviewed. But while still convinced
of
their guilt, Norris concedes that if Gondor and Resh returned to
Domino's
after police went public about the murder, as now appears to be true,
"That
would be a significant piece of evidence."

Nonetheless, Vigluicci insists he's unaware of anyone
on his
staff
who, as Yant suggests, believes authorities put the screws to Gondor
and
Resh. "If somebody feels that way, I would expect them to come to me
and
talk about it. That hasn't happened." He adds that it's premature to
predict
whether he would retry the two men once he exhausts appeals -- a
process
that could stretch on for years.

Meanwhile, prosecutors in neighboring counties, facing
similar
circumstances in other high-profile cases, recently have chosen to ease
off
the retrial accelerator -- if grudgingly.

In 2001, Cuyahoga County prosecutors let Michael
Green,
wrongfully
convicted of rape 13 years earlier, go free after DNA evidence cleared
him.
Last year in Summit County, prosecutors balked at retrying two men,
Nathaniel
Lewis and Jimmy Williams, after doubts arose about their rape
convictions.

Williams, who served 10 years, won his release after
his
alleged
victim recanted. Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh, who inherited the case
from
her predecessor, says the woman's decision to retract her accusation
sank
the case. But Walsh says she briefly considered fighting on, because
she's
uncertain of Williams's innocence. "In general, as prosecutors, we do
not
like to see those who have committed a crime walking the streets."

The problem is that prosecutors tend to have an
overripe
sense
of an accused person's guilt, former Stow Prosecutor Tom Watkins says.
Now
in private practice, he represented Williams. "[Prosecutors] don't like
to
give in to the fact that they screwed up, or even just to give in to
the
facts. All they want to do is keep that mark on the wall that shows
they
got a conviction."

Those marks often don't get erased until outside
pressure
surges,
says Kirk Migdal, Lewis's lawyer. Lewis served five years before an
appeals
court granted him a new trial because a judge suppressed portions of
his
alleged victim's diary. The woman declined to return to Ohio to testify
again,
and Walsh allowed Lewis to walk. "The press and the general public were
on
my client's side," Migdal says. "I'm sure that weighed into [Walsh's]
decision,
either subconsciously or consciously."

While Walsh denies that public scrutiny influenced
her, the
media
have begun circling Vigluicci. The Beacon Journal has covered
Gondor
and Resh's case, calling for their release in a November editorial. A
Cleveland
TV station also has a story in the works. (Connie Nardi's two children,
now
in their 20s, declined comment on the case, as did her ex-husband.)

Whether because of pure conviction, pride, or a fear
that
Gondor
and Resh would sue the county if freed, Vigluicci remains resolute
about
their guilt. Appellate attorneys Leonard and Owens don't expect him to
bend.
Earlier this week, the 11th District Court of Appeals sided with the
county
in rejecting their clients' second bond request for release on house
arrest.
Leonard thinks prosecutors opposed the request out of a profound sense
of
obstinacy.

"They would take this case to the U.S. Supreme Court
on up to
the U.N. if they could," she says. "They're doing anything they can to
delay
the release of these guys."

Gondor's late father, a Hungarian immigrant who fled
his
homeland
in 1956, put the prosecution's tactics in a more historical context.
"Even
when the communists ran Hungary," he would say, "it wasn't this bad."

A jury convicted Resh in July 1990. Before Gondor went
to
trial
two months later, he rejected a plea that would have given him his
freedom
in a couple of years. After a jury convicted him but before he was
sentenced,
prosecutors made an even sweeter offer: 5 to 25 years, with a good
chance
of being released on shock probation after only six months. He could
have
the deal if he signed a piece of paper with three words on it: "I was
there."

Gondor refused, knowing well he might spend the rest of
his
life
in prison.

"What he did," defense lawyer Levine says, "takes some
real
stones.
It also tells you how much these guys believe in their innocence."

At least one juror who voted to convict Resh has
changed her
mind.
Leonard and Owen submitted her affidavit to Judge Bannon last summer.
He
refused to allow the document into evidence, but it's revealing all the
same.
The woman states that after reviewing the new details presented on
appeal,
she no longer trusts the prosecution's account. At the bottom of the
paper,
she scribbled a final sentence.